Unified Easway
Unified Easway; Ez: Liydoqezerryemëin; Nr: Forente Jarneg; Ru: Единая Эзерия; also known as Greater Easway, is an irrendentist concept amongst Easwegian nationalists which seeks to unite presumed historical and affiliated Easwegian lands into one greater Easwegian state. Those who subscribe to this concept are known as Unified Easwegianists, Easwegian confederalists or Easwegian irredentists.
The current land of the Easwegian Common Union includes commonwealths Bear Island; with Essrina, Boriopa City, and Urdport; and the Pomors Frontier; including Maritime Hopen, the Common Sailors Park and Vardø. The Co-operative Government classifies all claimed territory except the Associated Community of Vardø Town Islands (officially claimed as a condominium but administered by Norway) as the Easwegian Free Realm, indicating actual control. Unified Easwegianists also use this term, but refer to Svalbard as well as Mainland Boriopa (a large portion of the Barents Region) as the Displaced Easwegian Territory.
Territory that Unified Easwegianists often want restored into Easway may include:
- Svalbard and Jan Mayen
- Bjarmaland and the Komi Republic
- Vardø (as a fully incorporated municipality)
- Hammerfest
- Tromsø
- Nenets Autonomous Okrug
- Franz Josef Land
- Novaya Zemlya
History
The Easwegian national identity finds its legendary roots around 1195 as an outpost of the Novgorod Republic, whereby the Ezaari and Viking sailors travelled throughout the Barents Sea (then known as the Norse Sea), discovering Svalbard. From here, they set up the Iron Commonwealth, which lasted as an outpost until 1478 when Muscovites dismantled the Novgorod Republic, and the outpost declared independence as the Easwegian Commonwealth.
Between the 13th and 16th centuries the Commonwealth held a vast territory spanning with varying amounts of control from the coasts of Northern Norway and Northern Russia up to the northern Ural Mountains. Easwegians lost control of the Kola Peninsula in 1505 to Muscovy but successfully gathered up local Ezaari, Norwegian, Saami, Nenets and Permian tribes into the Easwegian Guard and routed Muscovite advances at the river Mezen, holding control of the territory past this point until around 1570 when Ivan the Terrible began the Russian conquest into Siberia. The oncoming advances by Yermak Timoyevich's Cossack armies destroyed Commonwealth settlements, leading surviving Easwegians to retreat to Northern Norway and Svalbard.
The Easwegian Commonwealth lasted until it's final territories in Svalbard were conquered by rogue Norway-Sweden admiral and state minister Thomas Fasting in 1821, known as the Battle of Mount Furore. Easwegians, specifically the ethnic Ezaari, were subsequently expelled from all Norway-Sweden-controlled territories until the signing of the Spitsbergen Treaty in 1925.